The invention relates to soft punch type of hydraulic presses utilizing punch-driven rubber pads which compress thin metal blanks into or over hard compositioned dies to form a variety of objects. The main advantage of this type of process is elimination of need for expensive, hard compositioned punch members having the die contour facsimile. Another advantage is retention of fine surface finish of the metal blank, as opposed to finish degradation resulting when hard compositioned punch members are employed.
A main limitation of conventional soft punch presses, which are designed to form large metal blanks, is their inability to provide the great localized forces necessary to impart very fine detail in small blanks. Moreover, the cycle time of these large, very costly presses generally ranges from one to two minutes, mainly because of the great amount of hydraulic fluid which must be pumped to the cylinder under high pressure.
The present invention is specially designed to overcome the aforementioned disadvantages of conventional soft punch presses as applied to the forming of small metal blanks, while still retaining the surface finish preservation attribute of this art. Specifically the present invention is a relatively low cost, highly compact, bench mounted, fast cycle, safe and high tonnage soft punch press, specially designed to impart very fine detail to thin metal blanks.